


Frizzle the Younger

by idinathoreau



Series: The Adventures of Frizzle, the Younger [1]
Category: Magic School Bus, Magic School Bus Rides Again
Genre: Action/Adventure, Adventure, Adventure & Romance, F/F, F/M, Fiona is bi, Freeform, Historical Figures, Historical References, Multi, Pre-Series, Scientific Accuracy, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-12
Updated: 2017-12-12
Packaged: 2019-02-13 19:51:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12991287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idinathoreau/pseuds/idinathoreau
Summary: Travels through science and time with the new teacher of the Magic School Bus.





	Frizzle the Younger

No one ever could keep me tied down. Not that anyone had ever really tried. 

If there was one thing the Frizzle family was, we were proud of our eccentricity and desire to learn. We were also special. Mom used to say we all had a little touch of magic. Nothing world-shaking or time-altering but just a sparkle that let us be extraordinary. And my sister and I seemed to have more than just your average sparkle.

Of the two of us, Val had always been the golden child. She excelled in both school and the extraordinary. She was smart, curious, charming, and talented, even among our family. That’s why no one raised any stink when she was gifted the keys at the tender age of 16. She was ready for them; everyone could see it.

And while I wasn’t far behind her in most things, in this, she indisputably won. 

I never wanted to follow in Valerie’s footsteps. Not that anyone was ever forcing me to or even expecting me to. She was just the perfect embodiment of a Frizzle. Everyone in our extended family looked up to her and I was just Frizzle: the younger.

All the same though, when Val was handed those keys, it awoke a deep hunger in me. Hunger for the kind of adventure only having the keys could provide. But the keys were out of reach. So I’d just have to find adventure on my own. 

With that spirit, one day I just grabbed up my knapsack and took off. What can I say? I was 16, it was 1993 and I had waited long enough. The world was my oyster and I intended to know everything about it that I could. Keys or no keys, I wasn’t going to let my education suffer. Maybe I should have apologized for taking Dad’s Time-Winder but the thing was just collecting dust. Wasn’t it better if it was in use?

So my curious tinkering may have set the thing off and I ended up spending quite a long time on ancient Lesbos Island helping a wonderful young woman write some very beautiful poetry. In return, she let me study her father’s books on medicine and biology. It all worked out in the end. After awhile, I was able to untinker what I had tinkered and the Time-Winder shot me forward to the year 2016. Deciding I should maybe leave exploring time for later, I instead set off to explore space. 

After a few hitchhikes and a brief stint as a stand-up comedian in Lithuania, my lucky break got me all the way to a place I’d always wanted to go — the steppes of Mongolia in the Altai Mountains. So in a way, it was lucky my plane crashed there. I met a fascinating young girl who taught me about how her culture has hunted with golden eagles for generations. I nearly got frostbite cantering after her on her hunt. In return, I taught her everything I knew about medicine and human biology.

From Mongolia came a rather trying time in Japan, where I struggled to master calligraphy and the lost art of the sword. After that, I crossed the Pacific in a one-woman kayak and nearly drowned just off the coast of Guam. A passing freighter offered me a ride and I happily bounced from Guam to Hawai’i to the Gulf of California. 

Sometime later, I found myself wandering through the Brazilian jungle and somehow ended up being adopted by a family of golden lion tamarin monkeys. I think they wanted my necklace but didn’t know how to ask. They were a lot of fun. When I left, one of them followed me. Before long, she was sitting on my shoulder, comfortably jumping from adventure to adventure with me. I called her Goldie. 

Goldie made my adventures more interesting by far. She was curious and sneaky, often getting her fingers into things people didn’t want them in. One time, I’d had to pry her away from a bakery in Germany after she’d discovered banana-crème filling. I don’t think we’re welcome in that bakery anymore…

She’d also once pilfered the Hope Diamond. I don’t think anyone noticed though; I had recently perfected my espionage skills in study with the KGB and CIA (independently, of course) and those transferred rather well to breaking into the Smithsonian to restore the jewel. 

Goldie eventually learned though that some times were better than others for sticking her fingers into things. It took a few years but I eventually taught her.

If there was one thing I never did, it was settle down. There was just too much to see and learn. I had barely cracked into world languages, let alone the dead ones! My pack was always home to half a dozen books or so that I swapped out as I finished them. Reading a chapter or two of a classic before falling asleep at night was the best way to finish off a day of adventure. And long flights between new adventures were perfect for picking up phrases in other languages.

Goldie and I traversed the world, never once looking back in our endless thirst for knowledge and adventure. 

At some point while rocketing down the Alps on stolen skis, I realized I had turned 33 somewhere in my wanderlust. 

And for some reason, that made me more homesick than anything else. I debated going home but never made a move to. For one, I had effectively vanished for twenty-three years when I’d used the Time-Winder the first time. I’d be the wrong age if I went home. Val would be nearly twice my age. It just seemed wrong. And I hadn’t even told my parents when I left. 

I didn't belong at home.

After that, I stopped counting my numerical age. I measured my life in adventures and I had more of those than I had years on this Earth. Besides, it was harder to keep track of one’s age when one was leaping through time constantly. 

Despite the inherent danger I’d found in using the Time-Winder, it was irresistible to have that power and not use it. What was an adventure without a little risk after all?

And use it I did. 

It was finicky but functional. I couldn’t choose the destination precisely but it always seemed to take Goldie and me where we needed to go. 

1567 was an incredible year. Yes, I may have romanced both the captain’s wife and the captain himself aboard a trade vessel and then accidentally won a sword duel to become captain of a passing pirate schooner but life was so dull without conflict. So I may have picked those fights deliberately. Elizabeth was an incredible woman though…she didn’t even care that I was a woman.

Shame the pirates learned I was a woman as well and chased me halfway across the Caribbean before I managed to slip into Costa Rica and vanish. 

Nikola Tesla was a surprising ally in my quest to explore time. He was fascinated by my Time-Winder, even though I’m not sure he completely understood what it was. I spent many months at his side, studying engineering, chemistry, and electricity alongside him. Leaving was difficult but I had to. Edison was getting suspicious and I wasn’t looking to end up in any history books.

I picked up guitar somewhere between Han dynasty China and 1980’s New York, which surprisingly opened up more doors for me than my newly-cultivated ability to speak 14 different languages (2 of which were dead languages!) fluently. Seems throughout most of history, people have had more use for music performers than they have for reliable translators. Goldie and I played our way across America and Russia on the pennies cast by passersby and the tips of the tipsy.

Splashing along the tide lines with Rachel Carson was a truly illuminating experience. Was there nothing that woman didn’t know about the ocean? She was an incredible friend and companion to me in the 1950s when I'd stopped to study the early days of space exploration and the rise of the environmental movement. And who better to apprentice myself to than Rachel herself? We took a great many tidepool specimens back to her study and spent many weeks making small sketches of copepods and barnacles. I even offered my critiques on some of her writings. 

But when she mentioned Val, I knew it was time to leave her. Coming so close to my sister was jarring and it brought back feelings I hadn’t realized I’d buried so long ago.

I could pretend all I wanted but what I knew I craved, I couldn’t have. Without the keys, I was imprisoned in this life of wandering. The most I could hope for was a surface look at whatever phenomenon or historical event caught my eye. I was doomed to see everything through unbreakable glass.

But still, it was all I had. Val had inherited the keys. That left me with whatever I could take and whatever I could explore on my own. So I got even more daring. 

Maybe Alcatraz was a step too far though...

Goldie and I were sailing down the Colorado River on a raft I’d constructed on my own sometime in 1842 when my real adventure finally began.

As I struggled to both man the tiller and the sail (Goldie scouting ahead from our mast), an anachronistic ringing sound came from my pack. 

Strange…I wouldn’t have thought my phone would work in a time before it was invented…

Risking letting go of the tiller, I dug into the pocket and pulled out the ringing device. Wow, cell reception was surprisingly strong out here.

I answered the phone with one hand. “Hello? What’s up?” The sail rope slackened and I leaned on it to rig my sail back up.

“Hello Fi!” It had been years since I’d heard that voice.

“Val...!"

Goldie shrieked, drawing my attention back to the river. "Can you hold on one second?” I tucked the phone between my teeth so I could hold the sail with one hand and adjust the rudder with the other. Goldie and I shot down the river, dodging nimbly between the rapids. The rope burned into my hands and I smiled around the phone in my mouth. This was just as incredible as I had imagined!

We burst out into some steady water a few seconds later and I finally released my grip on the sail. 

“Sorry about that, rapids.” I continued, holding the phone to my ear again. “What can I do you for, Val?”

“I’ve got a proposition for you, dearest sister of mine.”

“Oh yeah? What?”

“How do you feel about teaching?”

“Teaching…?”

“Yes. You’d have to give up your lonely quest to explore all of time though. How does 2017 sound?”

My heart stuttered. “Does this mean…!”

“Yes Fiona. The keys are being passed. It’s your turn to inherit the Bus.”

I didn’t wait a second. Barely giving Goldie time to jump onto my shoulder, I scooped up my bag and tinkered the Time-Winder one last time.

At last, I was stepping right through that glass door.


End file.
